U.S. Pat. No. 4,346,983 describes an automatic system for developing cassettes comprising small xerographic plates for use in intraoral dental radiography. The cassette is inserted into the system which removes the plate from the cassette, developes an image through the use of toner supplied by a liquid fountain, dries the plate, transfers the image to an adhesive film, and then discharges and stores the plate for the next use.
A problem with this system is that the dentist frequently must have two copies of the set of images, one for the patient's file, the other for the insurance company. When photographic film is used for these images, a duplicate can be made simply by providing two photographic films on each cassette. However, xerographic plates are too large to be used this way. Presently, a duplicate image is made from a xerographic plate by making contact prints of the images on the adhesive film. An automatic method of making duplicate images is required.